“Levick noted the penguins’ autoerotic tendencies, and the seemingly aberrant behavior of young unpaired males and females….”

Hidden for nearly 100 years for being too “graphic,” a report of “hooligan” behaviors, including sexual coercion, by Adelie penguins observed during Captain Scott’s 1910 polar expedition has been uncovered and interpreted.

The naughty notes were rediscovered recently at the Natural History Museum in Tring, in England, and published in the recent issue of the journal Polar Record.

George Levick, a surgeon and the medical officer on Scott’s famous 1910-1913 expedition to the South Pole, called the Terra Nova expedition, detailed his account of the penguins’ seemingly odd behaviors in a four-page pamphlet “Sexual Habits of Adélie Penguins” in 1915. (The expedition, led by Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott, would arrive at the South Pole to discover that Amundsen had beaten them there.)